Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#181

Post by iso1631 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #148

iso1631 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called an annectdote. https://www.kpcnews.com/covid-19/article_8ab408ad-8fb0-5f74-... Overall, the average hospital stay for COVID-19 for all ages is 22.4 days, just over three weeks. The length of stay is slightly longer, 23.5 days, for regular hospital admissions and shorter for ICU patients at 16 days, likely because ICU patients go on to die in the hospital. That's based over thousands of patients. > Patie…

> That's called an annectdote. Oh look: this data matches my annecdote(sic): https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

That study specifically says

"There were too few studies to conduct any comparison by age or disease severity. "

It also dates back from a year ago, under very different circumstances to today

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#182

Post by iso1631 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #126

jhayward wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should note that the >14-day efficacy is presumed to decay fairly rapidly, thus the need for the 2nd dose to cement the response long-term, as well as eke out the last few percent of efficacy.

Then why is the delay in second doses being encouraged?

The idea behind the second dose being delayed in the UK was it was better to give 24 million and 80% coverage to the most vulnerable people with 1 dose over 12 weeks (assuming 2 million per week), then to give 2 doses to 9 million and 1 dose to 3 million over 12 weeks

.8 * 24 = 19.2m covered in scenario 1

.959 + .83 = 10.95m covered in scenario 2

Even if it were 60% with 1 dose and 95% with 2 it would be

.6 * 24 = 14.4m covered in scenario 1

.959 + .83 = 10.35m covered in scenario 2

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#183

Post by sjf » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

wcfields wrote: post #179

I may get downvoted for this, but genuinely curious if there's vaccine tourism (not that I'm in a position to get on a jet to get a shot). Eg, if the wait time is long for my group in the US/UK/Wherever, can I book a flight to UAE or Cuba to get a vaccine at the airport?

Sure, you think the 0.1% are just waiting for their phase to rollout?

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#184

Post by pipeoperator » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #154

aclimatt wrote: post #108

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

Yes, absolutely that should be the "end" of it. Especially since we are already giving the vaccine to front line works who aren't old or in danger. Anyone who wants to hole up until they get the vaccine should be able to. But I'll take the low risk.

Everyone can empathise with wanting life to get back to normal. However the problem with folk wanting to take the individual risk is that the “low” percentage of people needing medical help can still overburden health care systems.

This potentially means that people with other illness / disease can’t / don’t see a doctor in time, and others in a society take the brunt.

Yes, let’s open up; but let’s not throw caution to the wind either.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#185

Post by garmaine » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #159

garmaine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? No. This is the "flatten the curve" logic which was a horrible misjudgment. Having the disease in circulation in the community is not only doing tremendous damage to many, many people (even if the hospitals aren't full), but is also allowing the virus to mutate and poten…

> Countries like Australia and New Zealand have shown that if you keep up lockdown measures for just a month or two after the hospitals free up (AND if you institute and keep real travel quarantine restrictions), you can get the virus to effectively ZERO community spread and keep it there. It's too late for that anywhere that isn't super remote like AU/NZ. Even South Korea and Japan, isolated as they are and with ver…

Japan does NOT have strict lockdowns in place. I know, I work for a Japanese company. Heck they've been giving out travel vouchers for free travel around the country. Not a model for pandemic response at all.

Australia is hardly isolated. Tons of flights in and out every day, and a vital part of the world economy. Really, any country can be "isolated" if they just close the borders to non-quarantined (REAL quarantine) travel, which is much more important than lockdowns.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#186

Post by standardUser » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

vmchale wrote: post #118

aclimatt wrote: post #108

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

> hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? From a control theory perspective, it's one of the worst measures because it's delayed. Much more efficient to measure cases - then you don't need restricted social life as long.

It's an important metric because earlier indicators aren't as useful. The rate of new cases is tricky because we don't really care if someone gets COVID-19 anymore than we care if they get the common cold, assuming they have only mild symptoms and fully recover. Hospitalizations are the first unambiguous metric we have to know there is a serious problem that may require a dramatic response.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#187

Post by chrisjs95 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

I'm really worried that will be "locked down" indefinite even when hospitalizations go down. I'm also worried that when an actually deadly virus hits our shores we'll be more hesitate to do lockdowns. So basically governments used their once in a 50 year lockdown on this. It mainly killed people that were fat (why the US had a higher mortality) and old. Except no one every said lose weight, exercise and get fresh air. What happens when Ebola hits us.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#188

Post by rcpt » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

aclimatt wrote: post #108

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

As long as one believes that chronic covid does not exist or alter one's life expectancy and the comfort of the elderly is our top priority then yes. Once the olds are safe the virus shall run wild through the young.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#189

Post by arrosenberg » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

_coveredInBees wrote: post #173

teawrecks wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that we use hospital admissions as a metric to infer cases or some other metric, it IS the metric that matters. The problem over the last year wasn't that there exists a person who is at risk, it's that there didn't exist any healthcare system capacity to treat them. From very early on in the pandemic, it seemed to me like our goal for optimal balance between caution/risk was to try and maintain the h…

Call me a renegade, but I think the only goal should be to minimize the total number of deaths from Covid. Trying to maximize sustainable medical system occupancy is almost certainly not aligned with the former goal.

No perfect solutions there. If there was perfect quarantine, we would still lose additional lives from suicide, domestic violence, etc. from the increased stress. There is definitely a balance to be struck, and making sure we have capacity to treat all of the sick seems to be as good as any.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#190

Post by standardUser » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

dev1n wrote: post #171

aclimatt wrote: post #108

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

No. People (extraordinarily healthy people) are suffering pulmonary embolisms (and thus hospitalized) weeks after they have been cleared from the virus. There is a very, very, very long tail to this disease outside of the initial 2 - 4 weeks of being sick.

Small percentages of people suffer complications from many different types of illnesses. At a certain point, human beings simply have to live with a small chance of a bad outcome from ailments that are normally mild.